no one has actually said to do anything but wait, I will go against the fold and say strip out all those adsense units down the left and maybe even dump that sharing tool bar at the bottom of the page, you already have a load of social sharing buttons on each page and that bar at the bottom looks like its holding up load times.

Go into webmaster tools and request a crawl.

I wouldn't be surprised Alan looking at his website that a lot of links were built naturally by people linking to his site as it looks like a good resource.

I've got a website were I built some links to gain a good position and left it, over a few months that exposure built tons of new links without me knowing from all over the web.

Now if those little sites have been hit, lets say a fair amount had been wiped out then I can see how rankings could be lost.

If you have built backlinks from websites that have been hit by the update then basically those backlinks which are helping you to rank have gone and therefore your rankings drop.

When you say 'lots of (good) inbound links' what we talking about directory submissions, guest posts, paid links?

Are you guest blogging for the audience or for SEO purposes (backlinks)?

If it's for the audience (lets say they got 10,000 plus one buddies, 20,000 fb friends and 40,000 twitter followers) your link in the guest post goes to your website where a massive resource on the subject is available, signup boxes and all that stuff.

If it is to this level then a 'few' paid guest posts are fine, especially if the blogs main income is not the money coming in for charging for guest posts.

For example if smashing magazine charged for guest posts (maybe the cost of admin, half hour reading it formatting it, reading it again putting it up etc) there is a cost there for the time on smashing magazines part.

I think the paid stuff is when you do it in bulk, $5 for a link and you buy 100 of them.